It’s that time of year to take stock of ourselves, and think about doing better next year–a great time to think in fresh ways, about our teaching, about our students, about our own playing.

It’s a chance to refresh how we introduce various techniques or pieces, especially if we ever find ourselves feeling tired of any of them. Replace one or more of these with a new piece or a new angle. Spend a little time researching ideas of other teachers; the internet is a great resource for this, and there might be a post on the Music Teacher’s Helper Blog that can set new ideas percolating for you. The new search function is a terrific tool for this.

Look also at other blogs or posts; for example here’s one list of 10 New Year’s resolutions for music students. If you like these, you could share them with students.

As we make New Year’s resolutions to move on, improve, and renew our efforts, we usually try to avoid recriminations about past mistakes. Let’s apply those same ideas to our teaching: (more…)

‘Tis the season for studio performances. But before you stress about coordinating all the details, we have streamlined all the steps to make this winter’s recital a blast!

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Kids love music, and if exposed to good playing, they love all kinds of music.  But, sadly, Michelle is probably on target in her recent post (Using Technology to Teach Classical Music) when she says kids do not look forward to studying about classical music.  Why should that be?  What is not exciting about Stravinsky, Prokoviev, Beethoven, Copland, to name a few?  Is it a teaching problem fixable by technology, or a cultural problem?

Years ago I saw a survey about kids’ musical preferences in a major newspaper.  Kids were asked what their favorite music was, but of all the types of music they were allowed to choose from, two notable types were missing: classical and folk.  Instead I noticed a category called “slow music,” which of course did not receive many votes.  Why did researchers offer kids the choice of “slow music” and leave out classical or folk?  They didn’t even kids a chance to answer for themselves.

I explored the “slow music” question while doing some music demonstrations for 7th graders.  When asked what “slow music” was, some kids said it was classical.  So I played them a slow Scottish fiddle air, and then a fast classical violin piece by Bach.  This intrigued them.

Sometimes the presumptions of researchers–or teachers, parents, and administrators–put words in kids’ mouths, and ideas in their heads.  Of course, this is what teachers and parents are supposed to do.  But in catering to what we presume to be the interests of kids, is it possible we sometimes merely follow instead of lead?  (more…)

If you have many students, it can be tricky to find the open time slots in your schedule. An easy way to use MTH to help you do this is to create a name that is just for your open times. Be sure when you create the imaginary students profile that you enter a $0.00 for the lesson cost and you leave the email address blank unless you want to receive daily reminders of all of your open time slots.

Create events for the open time slots and make them repeating events through the end of your semester or school year. Assign them to your imaginary student (or leave them as global events that students must register for) and title the event available (or something like that) When you need to find open time spots, simply change the view to the name of your imaginary student and you will be able to see all of the available lesson times.

When a student would like to register for that lesson time, simply change the name to that student and their lesson will be scheduled through the end of the school year. Once a student discontinues lessons simply change the lesson back to your imaginary student.

I think it’s safe to say that most kids do not look forward to studying classical music. This year, as I was planning my unit on classical music for my Music Appreciation class, I decided get a little creative and hi tech with my teaching methods. I came up with a few methods of using technology to enhance the lessons. They are all project based. My students love getting creative with projects, they love music, and they love technology. It’s a match made in heaven, so here’s what I came up with. (more…)

How often have you wished that you could have a way for your students to practice with an accompanist more often? Smart Music is a fantastic program that allows them to do just that and more. It also makes it easier for teachers to give assignments and track the students progress and their grades. (more…)

During the holiday season, teachers receive gifts from students, and the search engine can help you keep track of what you received from which student.

In the student lesson notes section, I write xmas-gift, followed by the gift received in the private notes section. If I just type xmas, a search will pull out any lesson notes with the word xmas in it. As some of my students learn Christmas music during this time of year, I have the word xmas in many lesson notes.

After the holidays are over, you can go to the Lesson History under the Lesson tab, and search for xmas-gifts. This search will give you a list of all the students that gave you a gift during the holidays. Quite helpful.

I also use this technique to enter particular grades, whether weekly, monthly or quarterly. I precede the grade with an astrick *. An example of a grade is *10. A search for * will pull up the student grades.

There are many uses for the search engine that will enable MTH to work even harder for you. On the bright side, you don’t have to give MTH a raise for taking on more responsibility and work.

What creative ways do you use for the search engine?

Whether for beginners who need to understand what an octave is, or for advanced players (and teachers!) who just find it interesting, below is a chart I put together to compare musical notes to natural sounds such as insect buzzes.

In case you’d like to do some of your own comparisons, here’s a link to a chart showing all the frequencies of the notes on a piano.

I like to point out to students that anything moving 440 times per second sounds like the A above middle C. A mosquito sounds a little higher than that; a fly or bee buzzes lower. An electronic hum is usually between an A# and a B, because it is a multiple of the 60 cycles per second frequency of our electric current.

It’s reassuring for students to know that it requires no musical training for our ears to sense when two notes are in unison (which creates hope that one can learn to tune an instrument!) and when a note matches the note an octave above or below.  What we call an octave is a pair of notes, the higher one having exactly double the frequency (or vibrations/beats per second) of the lower one.  Our ears naturally hear this harmony, and also hear the dissonance if the two notes are slightly off from each other.

Do you work with beginners who wonder why two different notes can both be called “A” and why there are only 7 letters in the musical scale?  How do you usually explain this in your teaching?

Without further ado, below is the comparison of natural sounds and musical notes. Enjoy! (more…)

The following applications are available for Palm OS. This operating system works on both PCs and Macs and with many PDA’s. Make sure you check the list of compatible devices for each applications before you download it.
Scale Tune
Scale Tune is a great application to have right in your pocket at all times. It can tackle the job of a tuner, metronome and stopwatch. It has a piano keyboard and a scale (more…)

I teach private students Piano, Guitar, Bass Guitar and Voice in my studio as well as Guitar, Theory, Music Appreciation and Voice Classes in high school. This series of articles will touch on my methods of teaching the above.
If you are teaching or considering teaching guitar classes in a school system, this article might be of interest to you.

I have seen many music teachers teaching guitar classes in the school system. I was shocked to find many teachers that could not even play the instrument. Other teachers just used a method book for the classes.

My classes are different. The method book is good, as it teaches the students music rudiments and how to read music. However, there is much more to learn about the guitar. i spend one day a week in the book, and other days teaching the classes other guitar related subjects. I also find that the classes have students that have never played the guitar, as well as students that have played for years. This is where diversified teaching comes into play. I have to quickly determine the two types of students and develop separate plans for each. I also have the advanced students help tutor the beginners.

Classes learn the theory of song writing, performing their song, copywriting the song and transposing their song to another key. One day a week I have a performance day, where a student and/or teacher performs a song to the class. This inspires the shy students, later in the semester, to get up and perform a song also.

It amazes me that many students have not heard of icon groups or singers, so I spend one day a week showing a video and having a discussion of the content. I have even had high school students that were not familiar with the Beatles, Eric Clapton or Pink Floyd. One student, a junior, was a song writer and had been written up in the school newspaper on several occasions as being quite talented and involved with playing his songs in coffee shops on weekends. After he watched the Beatle movie, “Let It Be”, which shows the Beatles in the rough composing music, he said it was a life changing experience. The Beatles were shown to be regular people with flaws and tempers. The movie showed him that anyone could have a chance in writing music and having the music published.

Other class plans include teaching the pentatonic scale, and having the student apply it properly to a song. Students also suggest songs to learn, and i instruct the class how to play the piece.

Guitar classes enable the students that feel they are not attached, to become attached and recognized. Because of the music listened to by teens nowdays, guitar classes have become popular and usually has a waiting list. Class size averages around thirty students per class, and most students are motivated.

I am interested in your comments and ideas on teaching guitar in a private or classroom atmosphere. Next I will share my style in teaching guitar to private students.